Keep getting timed out during 1000+ player sync

[RubixDev]

So cjya is hosting a big community Archipelago sync today, and a test run for that started about an hour ago. It seems that for some reason, most Outer Wilds players (including me) had/have issues connecting to the server and always get a timeout. Connecting through Archipelago's text client works just fine though. Some players reported success after repeated attempts, but I and some others weren't able to join after over an hour of attempts.

I also tried locally rebuilding the mod and Archipelago library to increase the timeout from 4 seconds to 30 seconds, but that didn't help either, so it must be something else.

The logs also don't show anything suspicious, other than the connection failing. (the password is outside of the screenshot)

Also, every time I do try to join, the text client actually reports me as joining, but then also as leaving again a few seconds later. So some connection can obviously be made.

[Ixrec]

Most of this is probably the known issues with the MultiClient.NET library's poor handling of datapackage downloads, which the OW mod has no control over (short of reimplementing a whole AP client library from scratch). I received similar reports from cjya's previous big sync, and people far better at networking issues than I identified these issues with MultiClient.NET shortly thereafter. As far as I know, nothing has changed in MC.Net since then, so this is not surprising.

Unfortunately that also means there's nothing I can do about this for the forseeable future. There are many unresolved issues with MC.Net that its maintainers are fully aware of, and I completely lack the networking and .NET skills needed to contribute to any of it myself.

[RubixDev]

I see, that's unfortunate.

[RubixDev]

But if the issue comes from MC.Net, how come seemingly no other games also using it have this issue? I didn't see any Hollow Knight or A Short Hike players getting timed out, but both of those AP mods also use MC.Net.

[Ixrec]

Last time I was told all of the MC.Net games received similar complaints. If it somehow is just OW this time... well, honestly I don't buy that. But regardless, if you aren't getting any error messages more meaningful than "timed out", it's still the case that there's nothing I can do besides direct these complaints to MC.Net.

https://discord.com/channels/731205301247803413/1043855558303821844
https://github.com/ArchipelagoMW/Archipelago.MultiClient.Net

[RubixDev]

Just wanted to add for other people having this issue: connecting in the Text Client (or any other working client) first, really does fix this. The reason it initially didn't help for me is that I'm playing on linux and the game is running through proton, but I had the text client natively on linux. As soon as I launched the Windows version of the text client within the same proton prefix as the game, it immediately started working.

[Ixrec]

Perfect. That also proves this is the same datapackage issue we already knew about: the reason a Text Client connection helps is that Text Client and MC.Net clients share the same AP datapackage cache.